Definitely a poster child course for what you imagine as a Phoenix / Scottsdale desert golf course in the hills. The course is ... Continue »

Played here Saturday Morning POP 5 hours. Played a hot deal for $35

Definitely a poster child course for what you imagine as a Phoenix / Scottsdale desert golf course in the hills. The course is a little dried out as to be expected this time of year. Brown spots in fairways, some dried out area of elevated greens with no cover. The par three tee boxes have a lot of divots. The course is set for aeration next week so these are all standard leading up to a little course TLC. Aside from the minor blemishes this is a fabulous course. It circles around a couple peaks of a mountain. The par threes here are heavenly. They are all of the shorter variety but are mostly elevated greens into a green cut into the mountain. Some very fun dogleg water holes such as 1 and 18. The first starts off with the choice of hitting a long iron / hybrid left avoiding the water leaving a 200 yard shot or flying the water to leave a wedge in. The 18th par 5th is very similar. You can lay up left or fly a pond right to leave an iron second shot in. Many other fun risk reward holes with the choice to layup safely or cut a blind corner over the desert and cacti to leave a wedge in. The course requires strategy and accuracy of the tee if you want to go driver but has generous safe landing areas for a wood/hybrid. The greens are elevated but not overly so. I would say the most challenging aspects is the fairway lies. While this course isn't overly moundy like a Pete Dye course I noticed I had very few flat lies in the fairway requiring skilled approach shots to shoot well here. This is a beautiful demanding course but not brutally hard. Very fun to play I highly recommend it if someone wants to get out of Scottsdale and enjoy a beautiful course. Staff couldn't be friendlier and they have a great grill and specialize in making from scratch milkshakes which I haven't seen before.

I met up with my old Vegas work buddy for some golf. He was in town from the Sacramento area to play in a club volleyball tournament. We had played a lot of golf together while working in Sin City, an... Continue »

I met up with my old Vegas work buddy for some golf. He was in town from the Sacramento area to play in a club volleyball tournament. We had played a lot of golf together while working in Sin City, and since then we’ve tried to get together once a year for a golf getaway. We previously hit SoCal, Bend (OR), Paso Robles, and the Central Valley.
Las Sendas was our Round 1 at 2:30pm on Tuesday, 2/27/18. Late morning the weather was clear and sunny with only a light wind, but it transitioned to very windy with rain showers later in the afternoon, and the weather on the back 9 wound up beating us up as much as the course did. The course winds around several large rock uplifts and through a high-end residential community. There was more slope here than I initially thought there was going to be, as the community and the course is pushed up against the foothills rising on the east side of the valley, looking down on the valley floor and downtown. Fairways are generous but offline shots can run quickly into desert waste areas.
Greens and green surrounds were in excellent condition. Greens were very firm, allowing almost no ball mark, although we saw evidence of quite a few older ball marks. Greens rolled smoothly at medium+ speed. Some greens are tiered, and others are pretty severely sloped, and putts breaking away from the rock outcrops and downhill had plenty of speed. Rough around the greens could be lush or spotty, and areas that gathered a lot of balls could have a lot of divot damage, making lies in those areas chancy.
Fairways were in good shape and lies were good, ranging from tight to lush. Some fairways are fairly flat, and others are real rollercoasters with rolling swales and runoffs to desert washes – it looks to me like the amount of fairway movement is tied to proximity to the rock outcrops and the need for fairways to function as drainage conduits. Rough was fairly short and thin, and quickly gave way to desert, where lies ranged from playable to unplayable to lost. Tees were flat and in good condition, with par-3 tees being pretty damaged. Sand traps were groomed and in good condition. Sandy waste areas could be packed firm or powdery, making playing from there chancy.
Small grass range with only about a dozen hitting stations and unlimited balls. Small putting green, somewhat worn in the middle, with about six hole locations around the outside. Also, a pitching green with the sandtrap that’s sloped pretty steeply. Starter was ushering off multiple groups of four spaced appropriately. The course has multiple restaurants, and a very busy clubhouse area with a large group of outside people, not golfers. The golf shop is fairly small and compact. I got a pleasant greeting, but the guy was reluctant to let me go to the range three hours early (I wanted to warm up, then eat lunch), saying they had “a lot of guests”. And no cart, please – walk to the range! Yardage book available, but no GPS on carts, which featured a small basket and a cooler with ice, but no water. Saw the cart girl several times, and adequate water was available on-course. Nice, well-located bathrooms. Staff was hand-filling(!) divots on tees at 1 PM! – nice!
Unfortunately, I messed up regarding the tee time, and we reported to the first tee a few minutes late. The twosome we were to join was long gone, and we had to wait for two other groups to tee off before they were able to work us back in. So we teed off about 30 minutes late (scheduled: 2:04pm [twilight] to help hold the cost down [$55]). That bit us at the end, as we played the last few holes in gathering darkness (all the cloudiness from that fast-moving front didn’t help, either!), and after hitting tee shots on the 18th hole we couldn’t find our balls, so we missed out on this Z-shaped finishing par-5 playing around two lakes. Bummer!
This is a very nice and challenging course with a lot of beauty. Highly recommended. I'm really surprised that this is the first posted review in 4.5 years!
This was my first time getting back to Phoenix-area golf in 20+ years. Many thanks to several GKers in the Phoenix area who provided suggestions on where to play, given our restrictive geographic and cost criteria. We tried to get a mix of course types so we weren’t playing the same type of course over and over again. Thanks to chilipalmer99, dcoachl, bmcnicoll, sbarajasjr, and UNCLEDDBOY23 for suggesting great venues.

Water in play off tee on right side, and lots more in front of green. If you are a bit shorter off the tee, just follow the fairway around. If you are long enough, you can hit a shot over the water to the green (risky) or to a large area LEFT of the green and the trap which is an easier shot to get on in 3.

Keep tee shot right of center, allowing for a bit more of an open shot to green. Big bunker in front. Green slopes right to left, if pin is on left side hit for center of green and it will filter down to hole. If you're long you could be in desert/wash/bush trouble.